The Baconian Theory is a theory postulating that Shakespeare’s works were in fact written by Sir Francis Bacon.   This is a hotly contended point amongst some Shakespearean scholars, who believe that the plays were in fact written by the man Shakespeare from Stratford.

The history of this topic stretches back to 1781-1785 to the Reverend James Wilmot, the rector of Barton-on-the-Heath in Warwickshire, which is near Stratford. The Reverend Wilmot was a scholar of sorts and finding little evidence in the Stratford district that related to Shakespeare’s authorship, suspected that Shakespeare could not be the author of the works that bear his name.  He was also familiar with the works of Francis Bacon and formed the opinion that he was the most likely author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare. (“James Wilmot” )

The theory died down for several years, but was revived by Dr. William Henry Smith in 1856.  He wrote a letter to Lord Ellesmere, essentially a pamphlet expounding upon his reasons for believing that Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays. (Smith) Smith used several of Bacon’s letters, both to and from, that hinted of his authorship.   A year later, he published a book expounding this theory, entitled, Bacon and Shakespeare: An Inquiry Touching Players, Playhouses, and Play-writers in the Days of Elizabeth.

Smith’s book was not the only book expounding this theory to be published that year.   Delia Bacon also published a book on the Baconian theories.  In her book, however, she postulated that Shakespeare was in fact represented as a group of writers, a group that included Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser.  The group’s agenda, according to Bacon, was to transmit an anti-monarchial system of philosophy by concealing it in the text of the plays.

The issue lay buried for another few years, until 1867, when a bundle of bound documents were found in Northumberland House.  Some of the sheets had been forcibly removed, but among the contents of the bundle were several oratories and disquisitions written by Bacon.  The manuscripts of Richard II and Richard III were among the sheets that had removed.  Bacon and Shakespeare’s names had also been repeatedly scrawled on the outermost sheet.  The bundle had been found by John Bruce and the Earl of Northumberland had it sent to James Spedding, an author and the chief editor of Bacon’s works.

Spedding wrote a thesis on the bundle of documents, it was here that he cautiously appraised the date of the documents to be somewhere around 1592, making it the earliest mention of Shakespeare (or as Ben Jonson christened him, “The Swan of Avon”).   The Northumberland bundle shows us that Bacon had possession of the manuscripts of the plays, but it does not prove that Bacon himself wrote the plays. There is still no information on either how he came to possess the manuscripts or how they came to be removed from the bundle.

Constance Mary Fearon Pott was the first to notice that several of the ideas and turns of phrases in Bacon’s book, Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, were similar to some of those used in Shakespeare’s plays.  In 1891, she published her Baconian theory, developing an idea that another author, W.F.C. Wigston had believed, that Francis Bacon was the founding member of a society called the Rosicrucians.   The Rosicrucians were a secret sect of occult philosophers.  They claimed that they had invented literature, art, and drama (including the entire Shakespearean canon) before affixing the symbols of the rose and cross to their work.

The theme that Bacon had left encoded messages inside of the plays was a constant one throughout the late 19′Th century and early 20′Th century.   Elizabeth Wells Gallup claimed to have found evidence not only that Bacon had written the plays but that he was also the son of Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester through a secret marriage, through the use of what Bacon had called a “bi-lateral cipher.”   This cipher used two fonts as a way of encoding messages in binary code.

Ignatius L. Donnolly, Congressman and author also published a book with his ideas of ciphers in The Great Cryptogram.   No one else has been able to find these hidden messages and cryptographers, William and Elizabeth Friedman, in their 1957 book, The Shakespearian ciphers examined, showed that the use of such a cipher was unlikely to have been actually employed by Bacon. (Friedman)

Friedrich Nietzsche and mathematician Georg Cantor were both supporters of the Baconian Theory.    Cantor published two pamphlets in 1896 and 1897 supporting the theory.    American physician Orville Ward Owen was so convinced that he’d solved the ciphers, that he began excavating the riverbed of the River Wye (near Chepstow Castle) , searching for the original Shakespearean manuscripts. (Friedman)

Walter Conrad Arensberg, art collector and founder of the Francis Bacon Foundation (founded in California in 1937) believed that Bacon had concealed messages in not only one but a variety of different ciphers.  The encoded messages all related to a secret history of the Rosicrucians and some of their more esoteric secrets. He published an assortment of decipherments from 1922 and 1930; his final conclusion was that there were definitely concealed messages, even if he had failed to find them.  He left his collection of Baconiana to the foundation after his death.

More recent Baconian theorists tend to ignore the rather esoteric following that the theory had attracted in earlier years.  Bacon’s main reason for secrecy had been held that he desired high office and being publically known for a dramatist would have impeded  his efforts in that arena. However, this modern theory, made popular by Nigel Cockburn in his 1998 self-published book, The Bacon-Shakespeare Question, instead posits that Bacon desired secrecy because of the completion of his Great Instauration project.   In order to advance the scientific component of the project, he intended to set up new schools of instruction and experimentation to gather the data required (the scientific “Histories”) to which Bacon would then apply his inductive method to them.  To fully realize all of this, he needed to attain a high office, thereby garnering enough influence to make it workable.

Bacon also supposedly is claimed to have set out the otherwise-unpublished moral philosophical component of his project in the Shakespearean canon (the moral “Histories”). In this way, he believed he could influence the nobility through dramatic performance with his observations on what constitutes “good” government (a good example of this is seen in the relationship between Prince Hal and the Chief Justice in Henry IV, Part 2). He modeled this after the ancient idea of instructing through play-acting. (Cockburn)

In 2008, Barry R. Clarke self-published his theory, inspired by no small part by Cockburn’s book.  The Shakespeare Puzzle – A Non-Esoteric Baconian Theory, takes some of Cockburn’s conclusions and goes a step farther with them.  Exploring further into Bacon’s authorship of True Declaration (a production done by the Virginia Company and a possible source for The Tempest) and contrary to what Cockburn postulated,  makes the claim that Ben Jonson knew Bacon’s secret as early as December 1609. (Clarke)

The Baconian Theory is taken seriously by some scholars and not at all seriously by others.  We may never actually know who really wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare, whether it was the man from Stratford, Francis Bacon, or someone else entirely.   As long as Shakespeare’s works are widely read and available, there will always be some who doubt the authorship of the plays.

Bibliography

Clarke, Barry R. The Shakespeare Puzzle- A Non-Esoteric Baconian Theory. Barry R. Clarke, 2008.

Cockburn, Nigel. The Bacon-Shakespeare Question. Bacon Book, Inc, 1998 .

Friedman, William and Elizabeth. The Shakespearian ciphers examined. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.

Smith, William Henry. Bacon and Shakespeare. London : John Russell Smith , 1894.

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia . “James Wilmot” . 19 September 2008. 10 October 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Wilmot&oldid=239446428>.